suanck wrote:
Since Pali (and Sanskrit) and Classical Chinese are difficult languages to master -- and require several years to study, I wonder if it's better to have joint effort, collaboration / team effort, for a group of scholars (some are fluent in Pali & some are fluent in Classical Chinese) to work together on the subject, instead of individual studies?
Suan
Well, sure, that is a nice idea. But the realities of academia are not always conducive for such things.
Profs and wannabe profs have to write articles and books. They do this between teaching classes,
usually scraping in hours or minutes between "scheduled" activities.
To work together on an article is not easy. They would almost have to be in the same location / university.
One may say that tech allows them to be at separate locations, but a lot of things have to be discussed ad nauseum.
However, the way things work, most Buddhist studies centers specialize in one type of Buddhism,
eg. Pali / Theravada Buddhism, East Asian Buddhism, etc. so, they seldom have the people who can do both.
Most specialists in Pali / Theravada may know some Sanskrit, but very, very know Chinese or Japanese.
Most specialists in East Asian Buddhism know classical Buddhist Chinese, and probably Japanese,
some may know Skt or even Tibetan, but few know Chinese. Most think it entirely irrelevant.
Moreover, less academic "cred" (which is needed to become a Prof, or gain tenure) is given to translations
than it is to "academic" studies. So, there is little impetus to do major translation works, eg. the Samyuktagama, etc.
Academic teamwork in writing articles is easier said than done.